Authoring
Writing Documents
A Document is one piece of writing. It exists independently of any Publication — you can write it first and decide where it belongs later.
Starting a Document
Click Draft New Document (from a Publication's Manage tab) or New Document from the side menu. You'll get the editor with these fields:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | Required. |
| URL slug | Required. The last part of the Document's web address, e.g. a-year-of-letters. Must be unique across your Documents. It's suggested from the title as you type, and you can edit it. |
| Description | Optional. A short summary, used in listings, feeds, and link previews. |
| Splash image | Optional. A feature image. See The Image Library. With PRO you can also drop an image file onto this field to upload and set it. Other Bluesky reading apps also show it as the Document's thumbnail. |
| Tags | Optional. Free-form labels for browsing by topic. |
| Body | The main content, written in the rich text editor below. |
Create Document saves it for the first time and opens it in the full editor. A checklist shows what's still needed (title, slug, body) until you can save.
The rich text editor
The body editor supports headings, bold / italic, ordered and unordered lists, checklists, block quotes, code blocks, links, tables, horizontal rules, and inline images (see The Image Library for inserting images). Content is stored as HTML on your Bluesky account.
The toolbar's Insert menu adds a horizontal rule or a table (three by three, with a header row). While the cursor is in a table, a Table menu adds or removes rows and columns, turns the header row on or off, or deletes the table. Tab moves between cells.
Embeds
An Embed shows something from elsewhere in your Document: a video, some music, a code pen, a Bluesky post, or a preview card for any web page.
- Paste a link on its own line. Paste a link into an empty line and it becomes an Embed. Press Ctrl+Z straight away to keep it as a plain link instead. A link pasted in the middle of a sentence stays a link.
- Or use Insert → Embed… Paste the link, choose Preview to see what it will be, then Insert. For a link card you can change the title and description, and leave the image out.
These play in place: YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, CodePen and Bluesky posts. Any other link becomes a link card, with the page's title, description and image.
For Bandcamp, if SkyScribe can't read the page, choose Share then Embed on Bandcamp and paste the embed code it gives you instead of the link.
In the editor, an Embed shows as a preview card, not the player, so nothing plays while you write. Click it to select it, then use its buttons: Edit, Convert to link or Remove (or press Delete). Readers see the Embed on your SkyScribe Site, on sites built with the SkyScribe SDK, and on the Document's View page.
Videos, music and code pens first show as a Poster: the thumbnail, the title and a Play button (Load player for Spotify, Bandcamp and CodePen). The player only loads when a reader clicks it, and videos start playing straight away, so a page with lots of Embeds still opens quickly. Bluesky posts and link cards show in full straight away.
Embeds are stored as ordinary links marked with what they are, so anything that can't show the player (a feed reader, another app) still shows a working link.
With PRO, you can also drag an image file from your computer onto the editor, or paste one: it uploads to the Image Library and is inserted where you dropped it. Dropping several at once uploads them and opens the image picker. See Dropping images into a Document.
Saving and editing
- Save writes your changes. The editor warns you if you try to navigate away with unsaved changes — you can Stay or Discard & Leave.
- Editing a Document that's already Published takes effect immediately on any connected website — there's no separate "re-publish" step for edits.
- Publish / Unpublish is a separate action, covered in Publishing.
Finding your Documents
The Documents page (side menu) lists everything you've written, across all Publications, with controls to:
- Group by — none, Category, or Publication assignment
- Sort by — created / updated / published date, or content length, ascending or descending
- Filter and Tags — narrow the list
Each Document is shown as a row, the same wherever Documents are listed (here, a Publication's Manage tab, and Recent Documents on your Dashboard):
- Its title, on one line — hover a shortened title to see it in full.
- An at:// badge — hover to see the Document's full AT Protocol address, click to copy it.
- A date — here, whichever date you're sorting by.
- Where it's published: the Publication's logo (hover for the Publication and Category), or a Standalone pill if it isn't in any Publication.
- Its buttons: View, Edit, Publish or Unpublish, and Delete. Delete is only available for a Standalone Document; unpublish a published one first.
Recent Documents on the Dashboard shows your most recently updated Documents with just View and Edit.
Documents written in other apps, such as Leaflet or WordPress, are listed separately at the bottom, under Foreign Documents — see Importing Documents.
Documents you've submitted to someone else's Publication show under My Pending Submissions until they're accepted or rejected — see Collaborators & Contributors.
Deleting a Document
Open the Document and use Delete. This permanently removes the record from your account. If it was published, it's removed from its Publication first.
Next
Importing Documents — bringing in Documents you wrote in other apps.